I am in a panic and down to my last hope and was wondering if you have a quick moment to spare to provide me some helpful advice.

The situation: I was a 10.6.8 Mac OSX user up until yesterday. Out of curiosity and other advantages I decided to install 10.7.5. Here's where I did my first few mistakes. I don't have a Time Machine or Time Capsule, nor did I back up my system to an external drive, as these were both inaccessible. 10.7.5 was looking pretty good until my brother realized many of the created and originally developed Apple software/apps were no longer working. We wanted to downgrade, now it's an epic fail because my Mac doesn't have any OS on it. After startup it goes straight to Disk Utility menu.

All I want to do is use 10.6.8 (still deciding on purchasing) CD and go back to normal. We have our important files saved, so we don't care if it goes back to factory defaults.Money is very tight around here and I have to really be certain if I purchase the 10.6.8 CD from Apple Store, that I can get it back to its proper function.

I don't know who else to go to for help. I don't have the funds to pay for AppleCare. I hope you can guide me in the process of getting my Mac to work again.

Thank you so much in advance. I hope to hear from you. I don't have any other options due to financial restrictions, else this would've been handled hours go.

It wasn't compatible with the applications I currently had, and I wanted to downgrade it back to 10.6.8. From the Disk Utility, I believe everything was removed when trying to restore back to factory defaults. But along the process, something happened, which I'm not sure.

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